It is a great thing, when our Gethsemane hours come, when the cup of bitterness is pressed to our lips ... to feel that it is not fate, that it is not necessity, but divine love for good ends working upon us.

Whatever may be our condition in life, it is better to lay hold of its advantages than to count its evils.

As for environments, the kingliest being ever born in the flesh lay in a manger.

Revolution does not insure progress. You may overturn thrones, but what proof that anything better will grow upon the soil?

Tribulation will not hurt you, unless as it too often does; it hardens you and makes you sour, narrow and skeptical

The true Church is not an institution to be kept apart from the world because the world "is common and unclean," but a vital heart of truth and love, beating with the life of Jesus, and sending abroad its sanctifying pulsations until nothing shall be common and unclean.

A man's love for his native land lies deeper than any logical expression, among those pulses of the heart which vibrate to the sanctities of home, and to the thoughts which leap up from his father's graves.